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Mono 0.30 Released

Posted by michael on from the still-a-terrible-name dept.

Blair16 writes "From OSNews -- Mono 0.30 has been released. This release includes four components at once: the Runtime and Software Development Kit, the Documentation browser, and the ASP.NET server with its Apache module. Packages for various distributions are also available from our download page. This is mostly a fine-tuning release: bug fixing and performance improvements are the major benefits, but new classes and new features are also included. See the rest of the notes for details."

32 comments

  1. Meanwhile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    .NET FrameWork had already shipped version 1.1.

    If Mono people only hired faster programmers maybe they could catch up by 2007. Oh, I forgot they are not using Visual Studio, prefer eMAX and thus lose such features as autocomplete and online MSDN docs.

    1. Re:Meanwhile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're slow because they're still adding all of the bugs that VS.Net has already.

    2. Re:Meanwhile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What bugs? VS.NET is Microsofts most bug free application ever.

      Seriously.

      - Moomin

    3. Re:Meanwhile by ajagci · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Meanwhile, Mono already has a complete suite of open source toolkits and APIs that run rings around what Microsoft offers and let any Gnome programmer become instantly productive on the platform.

      In that, Mono has a leg up both on Java and on .NET: both Java and .NET require open source programmers to learn completely new APIs, APIs that are arguably proprietary. And in the case of Java, there isn't even a credible attempt at an open source implementation (of, for example, Swing), and it is questionable whether an open source implementation is even legally possible.

      Mono, in contrast, offers access to many open source APIs and libraries (foremost, Gtk+, which is the de-facto standard for Mono GUIs) and, in addition, makes a credible effort at providing a .NET environment and Java support, to the degree legally possible.

      Overall, the progress of the Mono project over the last year and a half has been nothing short of astounding. GNU C, GNU C++, and GNU gcj, took much longer just to produce a compiler and runtime, and all the open source Java platform efforts are woefully incomplete in comparison. The closest in terms of offering a complete environment is perhaps Python, but Python is a much simpler system under the hood and has different range of possible applications.

    4. Re:Meanwhile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But why would anyone care if open source Java platform efforts are incomplete in comparison to Mono because complete closed source Java environments are readily available (at no cost) and are much better (performance, features, stability, general maturity, support, everything) than their Mono counterparts?

      I'd advise everyone to stay away from Mono as Microsoft will screw the project somehow sooner or later (especially if they miraculously achieve some sort of portability between Windows and Mono).

  2. I can see the ad campaign now... by pb · · Score: 2, Funny
    "Got Mono?"

    ...eww...

    --
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
    1. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      man.. I got mono about 3 years ago... the sad part was that it did not involved a kiss or anything like that.. I was the unluckiest of all the mono patients... :(

    2. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by br0ck · · Score: 4, Funny

      You laugh.

    3. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by Directrix1 · · Score: 1

      You would that instead of perpetually being behind Microsoft in the current state of the libraries, that we would develop a completely new set of libraries. That way we aren't always playing catch up to what will ultimately be a windows only set of libraries.

      --
      Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
    4. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by MBoffin · · Score: 4, Informative
      You would that instead of perpetually being behind Microsoft in the current state of the libraries, that we would develop a completely new set of libraries. That way we aren't always playing catch up to what will ultimately be a windows only set of libraries.

      The Mono project is developing its own set of libraries. Read Question #1 of the Mono FAQ. This is why I support the Mono project. It's not just following in the footsteps of Microsoft. It's taking a good idea and pushing it beyond where Microsoft may or may not choose to take it.
    5. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by Directrix1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Mono Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Ximian that is working to develop an open source, Unix version of the Microsoft .NET development platform.

      They may develop independant libraries, but the core of it is just implementing Microsoft's .NET platform which is the core library. They will always be catching up in that initiative, and they might as well just develop a completely new base of libraries.

      --
      Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
    6. Re:I can see the ad campaign now... by anotherbob · · Score: 1

      "Once you go-mono, you never dot net."

  3. We're not worthy! by NanoGator · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought I had Mono once for an entire year, turns out I was just really bored.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  4. Holding out for debs by sab39 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sadly, the Debian packages are still in rather a strange state of limbo: You can get them if you can find the magic incantation to add to sources.list, but they're a January 14th snapshot (which isn't too old, but if you're going to do something from 2 weeks ago, why bother with a nightly snapshot in the first place, why not the last stable release?) and don't include libapache-mod-mono. Meanwhile libapache-mod-mono is also available separately but doesn't seem to work with the latest packages of everything else.

    Which is making my attempts to port an ASP.NET application to work on mono a fairly frustrating experience, to say the least...

    1. Re:Holding out for debs by adamy · · Score: 1

      While I really like Debian, for apache stuff, it quite often makes sense to build your own. I highly recommend the Apache Toolkit as a starting point. It sounds like it might server your needs.

      That being said, I use the Debian stable apache, but my needs are simple.

      --
      Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
    2. Re:Holding out for debs by named · · Score: 1

      While you're busy holding out for the debs, you can try this neat program I found that keeps things nice & tidy.

      It's called stow (package name is the same). It works to keep source installations in their own happy directory where they can't screw with anything else (eg /usr/local/stow/mono-0.30).

      So, the incantation for installing from source goes something like:

      download a package
      unpack the archive
      cd $archivedir
      ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/$package-$ver
      make
      sudo make install
      cd /usr/local/stow
      sudo stow $package-$ver

      If you do it this way, you'll need to add something like MONO_PATH=/usr/local/lib to your environment if you want to use things like gtk#

      Hope this helps.

    3. Re:Holding out for debs by reaper20 · · Score: 2, Informative

      They were in incoming earlier today and are already on my debian mirror.

      They're still the January 14th CVS pulls, but at least they're in Sid now, along with gnome-sharp and gtk-sharp, so they're probably packaging .30 as we speak.

    4. Re:Holding out for debs by sab39 · · Score: 1

      This is great!

      Unfortunately, it still doesn't include libapache-mod-mono which is critical for me :( Running the last packaged libapache-mod-mono with the new mono debs still doesn't work (unsurprisingly, since they're the same debs I installed previously)...

      Still, it seems the debian mono packaging team is making much more progress than I had guessed from following their mailing list :)

      Thanks for the heads-up!

  5. monoculture? by FiDooDa · · Score: 1

    I have no idea why they decided on that name, but if mono comes from monoculture (as in the threat of a monoculture) i think it is a brilliant idea.

    1. Re:monoculture? by ajagci · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Look in the FAQ. "Mono" means "monkey" in Spanish. Presumably, it's because of Miguel's heritage and the Ximian sponsorship.

      Because of the associations in English (mono-nucleosis, mono-poly, mono-aural) it was not such a great choice.

    2. Re:monoculture? by hitchhacker · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Mono" means "monkey" in Spanish. Presumably, it's because of Miguel's heritage..

      Damn, dude. That's harsh..
      I suppose Miguel should just climb back up the tree he came from.. ;)

      -metric

    3. Re:monoculture? by kpansky · · Score: 1

      Mod parent up insightful

      --

      --Kevin
  6. Mono by pphoenix · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Haven't tried Mono, but i sure hope it is worth the change, from win32 .NET SDK, does anyone know about its performance, is it worth leaving my GNU C, for this MONO platform, or should i use C# for win32, when it comes to a *nix i stick with a C/C++ or a JAVA?

    1. Re:Mono by Fubar420 · · Score: 1

      I don't know, personally, I think the greatest part of .net was the Windows.Forms, and while there's work to port them, it's not there yet. I really would love being able to simply develop on linux and test on windows, my laptop just bugs out too much!!

      --
      -- (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
    2. Re:Mono by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      C/C++ are not really comparable to C#, so that doesn't really make much sense. Use each where they are appropriate...

  7. Can someone explain it all to me? by rowanxmas · · Score: 2
    So I just downloaded and built the CVS version of mono using their linux script. It seemed to work out well, but now I don't know how to do anything. Here are the programs I have at my disposal:
    • mint
    • mono
    • monodis
    • monograph
    • monosn
    • pedump
    • mcs

    Now, I know that mcs is the compiler. I know that mono and mint run things ( but I don't know what the difference is ). I have no idea about the rest. I also don't know how to set up my "classpath". I am quite experienced in Java, but I am not sure how to go about using mono. Any hints would be welcome.

    The ultimate goal is to get Piccolo.NET to run. Since I use the regular Java Piccolo all the time.
    1. Re:Can someone explain it all to me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      mint - interpreter which is easier to port to different architectures but slower than mono

      mono - JIT runtime (faster than mint)

      monodis - disassembles assemblies (.exe and .dll) to CIL bytecode

      mcs - C# compiler

      example:
      mcs file.cs -o file.exe
      mono file.exe

  8. It's useful independently... think Gtk# by r6144 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It is already quite comfortable to write Gtk/Gnome programs with Mono. Great for those finding Gtk programs in C too verbose or manual free'ing too cumbersome.

    The only thing holding me back is the debugger which did not work well last time I tried (just usable, frequent lockups). Seems that it has been fixed, I'll give it a try...

  9. Likewise... by tepples · · Score: 1

    The GNU Project is an open development initiative sponsored by Free Software Foundation and its contributors that is working to develop a free software version of the Open Group Single UNIX Specification development platform.

    They may develop independant libraries, but the core of it is just implementing the Open Group's UNIX platform which is the core library. They will always be catching up in that initiative, and they might as well just develop a completely new base of libraries.

  10. Mono performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    How about performance? Mono is of course still pretty young and has still a long way to go, but I think it is disastrous for Mono if Microsoft's performance stays ahead.
    Just run the Scimark benchmark to see the difference. Java outperformes both Mono and MS .NET, and MS .NET is almost twice as fast as Mono.
    I think this performance issue is especially important due to the portability of .NET Apps. Which one would you choose if you want to run your application? Just think of a weather simulation that might take one or two days to complete...

  11. A little too fast one might say by QuantumG · · Score: 0, Troll

    Face it, Miguel is a Microsoft stooge. This is about as opaque as the Soviet overthrow of the Afghanistan monoarchy.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  12. s/greatest/only good/ by QuantumG · · Score: 1

    That's gotta get ported. Use WINE or something.. just do it.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.